Coorabell Hall Film Club
Wednesday 8 January
The Blues Brothers

Food & drinks (Licensed) from 6.00PM
Movie starts at 7.30PM

The Blues Brothers

Who would have thought a genial comedy made over 40 years ago would be so thoroughly be deflected by recent events? Whatever one might have expected from a first viewing of The Blues Brothers, it wasn’t that it would uncomfortably mirror what is happening in the world right now.

But consider this: at various points in the film you see cars driven through groups of pedestrians (including, at one point, a group of anti-fascist demonstrators); you see a big city police force responding to provocation with ultra-violence, and the military out on the streets fighting the crowds; you see a far-right figurehead assuring the his world is “an organisation of decent, law abiding white folks, just like you”; and you see the Black experience appropriated and repackaged as entertainment for a White audience. Watching The Blues Brothers in 2025 can be a disorienting experience.

It’s also worth noting that cultural appropriation was not so much of a sin when the film was made in 1980. Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were absolutely sincere in their love of the blues, and they fought for the legends who made cameos to have speaking roles, given to Aretha Franklin, Cab Calloway and Ray Charles. On the other hand, though, it’s strange to see John Lee Hooker playing Boom Boom for black people in the street, while Aykroyd and Belushi – who was, apparently, a moderate pub singer – play R&B to a big theatre full of white people at the gig they put on to raise money for their old orphanage. 

But judge The Blues Brothers on its own terms, not as an illustration of the politics of race and society; rather as a comedy. Aykroyd and Belushi? Comic legends! All in all though the movie is a product of its time, moves at a cracking pace and has moments of comic brilliance.